HP Wins $67 Million Spain Government Cloud Contract

The government of Catalonia, Spain, has signed a $67 million contract with HP to transform the government's data centers to a cloud-based infrastructure in order to operate its compute services more efficiently. The agreement runs for 10 years.

HP will be charged with moving Catalonia's infrastructure from government-owned data centers to secure, HP-managed cloud infrastructure run by HP Spain in Barcelona, capital of the Spanish state. The 7.5 million Catalans are a recognized nationality within Spain, and will hold a vote in 2014 on whether they wish to be independent of Spain. The state is Spain's easternmost, bordering both the Mediterranean and France.

HP already is a manager of Catalonia's compute infrastructure through its IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Services and Applications Services. It will continue to do so as it migrates the infrastructure to a virtual private cloud inside a Barcelona HP Enterprise Cloud data center.

Enrique Solbes, general manager of HP Enterprise Services Iberia, said the shift to HP's cloud would represent the best way for the state government to rapidly modernize its computing resources. "This transformation leverages HP's proven cloud portfolio and broad expertise in technology consulting," Solbes said in the announcement. He also said that it will allow the state government to move from fixed assets and costs to "a flexible model that enables greater agility and innovation."

Other European countries already have HP Enterprise cloud facilities. The Catalonia contract will cause HP to expand its Enterprise Cloud network into Spain.

The operation will function as a managed service, with HP technicians running SAP's financing and purchasing applications as hosted services in the new facility. At the same time, a user portal will allow government departments and the office of the president to provision their own servers and manage their own content and data.

Compared to other cloud vendors, HP has quickly entered the private cloud market with OpenStack consulting services and an ability to build private cloud infrastructure to customers' specifications. It can then be used by the customer to run applications in an HP data center or leased as a service, with HP directly managing the operation of the applications.

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